What Was the Book

popmuze · Jul 9, 2007

...you carried around in your back pocket all through high school and college hoping to attract members of the opposite sex with your high literary sensibilities?
Mine was "Notes from Underground" by Dostoyevski (sp?). Never did finish it. But I met a lot of pseudo intellectual girls. So what, I was a pseudo intellectual too.

Siddow · Jul 9, 2007

I was a stoner in high school. So it was Catcher in the Rye, of course!

Harper K · Jul 9, 2007

I was all about the poetry then. I kept the following books rotating:

Howl - Allen Ginsberg
Lunch Poems - Frank O'Hara
A Coney Island of the Mind - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

... But I was so very tiny in high school and couldn't fit any of those books in the back pocket of my jeans. I would read them in study hall, though, ostensibly because I was too deep for everyone else... but really because I just didn't have anyone to talk to.

A friend of mine topped me, though. She carried around James Joyce's Finnegans Wake for most of junior year. Swore she read it and that it was the greatest book ever.

JoNightshade · Jul 9, 2007

I spent college attempting to avoid the opposite sex. And I carried whatever book I was currently reading.

EDIT: On the other hand, the book that brought my husband and I together (in college) was A Canticle for Leibowitz. We discovered accidentally that we're the only two people on the face of the earth who truly appreciate that book... and yep, he managed to bag me.

popmuze · Jul 9, 2007

satori said:
She carried around James Joyce's Finnegans Wake for most of junior year. Swore she read it and that it was the greatest book ever.

Whatever she's reading now it's gonna be all downhill from there.

MidnightMuse · Jul 9, 2007

In college I found medical text books to be the best way to weed out the prospects, and beat the others over the head with. They also kept my arms nicely slimmed down and strong.

Did a number on my back, though.

kristie911 · Jul 9, 2007

I took welding in college...there was no need to carry around books. Nothing attracts men like a woman that can weld.

But I usually had too many college books to carry around...I didn't have the energy to carry a book to read for pleasure.

zahra · Jul 9, 2007

The blokes round where I grew up were as thick as pigshit, so carrying a book would have had the opposite effect. Carrying 'Photo Secret Love' magazine, now - they'd have understood that.

Stew21 · Jul 9, 2007

in college I was reading a ton of kurt vonnegut, also got interested in tom robbins and read a couple of those, and read a bunch of the classics that I hadn't paid enough attention to in high school.
if someone asked me for a recommendation on what to read my answer was
"Start with Slaughterhouse Five, then read Breakfast of Champions. When you're done with those, let your new found Vonnegut addiction lead you to the rest."

Alexandra Little · Jul 9, 2007

Harry Potter, and a Hellsing manga (guess which crowd I hung out with?) I was going more for the...oh....geeky sensibilties.

popmuze · Jul 9, 2007

kristie911 said:
Nothing attracts men like a woman that can weld.

I think there's a t-shirt in that slogan. Maybe even a movie script.

Anonymisty · Jul 9, 2007

During junior year of high school I was seriously interested in a senior who read science fiction. I worked the pass desk in the library and he came in almost every day, so I would always make sure I was reading some huge science fiction tome. Dune was the book that finally caught his attention.

We never dated, but we sure did have some great conversations the rest of that year.

Devil Ledbetter · Jul 9, 2007

popmuze said:
...you carried around in your back pocket all through high school and college hoping to attract members of the opposite sex with your high literary sensibilities?

Uhh, you mean, what book did a boy give me to read that impressed me in high school?

Cat's Cradle. Vonnegut.

Devil Ledbetter · Jul 9, 2007

kristie911 said:
I took welding in college...there was no need to carry around books. Nothing attracts men like a woman that can weld.

That's pretty much the premise of my WIP. Well, it's not welding, per se ... that plot was taken up in Flashdance, I think.

DarkLight · Jul 9, 2007

Well, I'm in high school right now. It's summer break but I plan on carrying Paradise Lost with me. It helps attract intellectuals and convinces teachers that you are smart and deserve good grades. In the event that a single point determines whether or not your essay is an A or a B, the person who carries around the thick classic and reads it at lunch will get the A everytime.

scarletpeaches · Jul 9, 2007

I didn't even kiss a boy until after I'd left high school. Impressing the opposite sex with my reading material was the last thing on my mind - I used books to avoid people, not attract them.

Jen_D · Jul 9, 2007

scarletpeaches said:
I used books to avoid people, not attract them.

Pitifully sad, but same here.

popmuze · Jul 9, 2007

I bet you attracted a lot of people by trying to avoid them. Those were the ones I usually went after. I think they were reading Hesse or Sartre or Anais Nin or Sylvia Plath.

NeuroFizz · Jul 9, 2007

I carried a condom

in my wallet

it made a suggestive ring-mark in the leather

it rotted in the wrapper...

blacbird · Jul 9, 2007

popmuze said:
...you carried around in your back pocket all through high school and college hoping to attract members of the opposite sex with your high literary sensibilities?

Impress chicks with a book?????? Surely you jest. Me, I played basketball.

That didn't work, either.

caw

popmuze · Jul 9, 2007

blacbird said:
Me, I played basketball.

That didn't work, either.

caw

Worked pretty well for Wilt Chamberlain.

maestrowork · Jul 9, 2007

Books? LOL.

I carried my credit card.

blacbird · Jul 9, 2007

popmuze said:
Worked pretty well for Wilt Chamberlain.

He was . . . like . . . better than I was.

caw

kristie911 · Jul 10, 2007

maestrowork said:
I carried my credit card.

Hell, that works on me now.

Who needs a man with books when he's got plastic? Yes, I mean a credit card, you perverts!

popmuze · Jul 10, 2007

I didn't get a credit card until I was 35. Maybe that explains something about the kind of women I attracted.

What Was the Book

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